Confronting Indifference - A Powerful Pro-Life Message from Canada

Here's a powerful response to all those who find pro-life literature and pictures "distasteful" and "offensive."  This excellent post is from The Bridgehead, a blog of The Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform, which "focuses on making the killing of pre-born human beings unthinkable."  It is reprinted here with their kind permission.

To Karen, the Woman Who Hung Up On Me Yesterday

By Stephanie Gray

When you called last week, our administrator said you sounded nice.  She said you said it was urgent that you speak to me, so I had my assistant call you as I was out of the country.  When she spoke to you, you told her you’d really like to speak with me.  You wouldn’t give her any details about the reason for your call.  She said you sounded sad.

And so my first day back in the office I called you.  I took your call seriously.

When you told me about your 7-year-old daughter being so troubled by the bloody abortion image she saw in Calgary and when you said you were wondering what to say to her, I took you seriously.  I offered my counsel.  I told you how ignoring the issue, which is what you’d done up to that point, could be causing more confusion.  I told you that giving a simple answer could be sufficient to address her concern without going into great detail—your concern—about such an “adult” topic.  I gave you a very practical way of doing this, by analogizing to how you could talk to your 7-year-old about other injustices.

I asked you to consider what you would do if your daughter saw an image of a starving child with a distended stomach with flies around her head.  I asked you to consider what you would say, what your daughter would need to hear, about that image which would understandably trouble an innocent mind.  We spoke about how you could gently explain that some children in the world aren’t as lucky to have the care and food and shelter that she has.  We spoke about how her little mind would be less troubled if she didn’t feel helpless, and that you could channel her concern into positive action that would help her feel like she was making a real difference in the world.

We spoke about how you could suggest that she save money in her piggy bank every week, and how at the end of the month you would send that money to help starving children.  And then I connected it to abortion imagery—I gave you a practical way to deal with what she’s seen: how you could gently explain there are some people who hurt young babies, and that you could encourage her with the good news that the people with the pictures are trying to save babies (something that young children, who love babies, would be encouraged to know).  I then told you how you could encourage her to save money in her piggy bank that you would then send to a pregnancy help centre that would directly help moms and babies in need.

But then you said that was different.  And then I asked you something rather important.  I asked you what you thought about abortion.  And then you told me. 

You told me something, Karen, that, I’ll admit, outraged me.  You told me that you personally wouldn’t have an abortion but you “didn’t care” if other people did.

You don’t care, Karen? 

 

You don’t care if other people hire “hit-men” to rip the arms and legs off their children?

You don’t care if other people enlist a “doctor” to suction their babies’ tiny bodies to pieces? 

You don’t care if other children are dragged to their deaths by those most expected to protect and preserve their lives?

Karen, your daughter is right, very, very right to be confused and concerned and you’re the person to blame—not me.

Our pictures have forced you to confront an extremely ugly part of your worldview.  And you’re upset because the voice of conscience isn’t coming from your head—it’s coming from your daughter.

By your staying silent she’s bewildered.  But if you speak with the view you hold, she’ll be positively frightened.

So you want me to make the pictures go away.  But Karen, I want you to make that inhumane view go away.

My colleagues and I won’t stop showing the pictures, and your daughter won’t stop asking about them—until.  Until you abandon your hard-hearted view and start caring about other peoples’ kids.  That little voice of innocence is crying out to you the way the babies’ voices can’t.

You didn’t like this epiphany, so you hung up.  You shut out my voice the way you want me to shut out the pictures.

But as your daughter would have seen in Pinocchio, we all need a little Jiminy Cricket in our lives.